The Tragedy of Sam Harris: Israel & Gaza

Watch the video form of this essay on youtube.

Sam Harris recently wrote an article titled Islam, Israel, and the Tragedy of Gaza. Sam's career has been built off of his critiques of religion and his advocacy of rational thinking, logic, and moral clarity. Many of his followers, who are self-proclaimed freethinkers themselves, have blindly followed his lead on Israel and Gaza. I am writing this piece to easily demonstrate how he is exposed as an obvious hypocrite and fraud on this issue - so much so that his status as a public intellectual should be seriously questioned if not completely disregarded.

Let me begin by addressing the use of the word “tragedy.” It is a word that has been used by the pro-Israel camp with the intention of avoiding accountability for the IDF’s conduct in Gaza, as if the events there are the result of some unavoidable cosmic misfortune, rather than a deliberate, systematic, and ongoing criminal military policy which aims to maximize collateral damage.

This is indeed one of their key tactics of debate, which is most evident in the tired human shield argument, which insists that the IDF simply has no choice but to kill innocent civilians because Hamas is nearby.  Aside from the fact that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN have found no substantiated evidence that Hamas systematically uses human shields to the degree Israel claims , international law is clear that civilians are entitled to full protection under international law unless they directly participate in the fighting.

This is why no other legitimate western military force conducts itself in this way. As someone who has viewed hundreds of hours of footage from the Global War on Terror, you can plainly watch how US soldiers were frequently forced to hold their fire when the Taliban would move behind the cover of women and children.

Now contrast this with the confessions of IDF soldiers:

“If there is [even] a feeling of threat, there is no need to explain — you just shoot,” one soldier testified. Another described burning down Palestinian homes on orders from commanders: “Before you leave, you burn down the house — every house. This is backed up at the battalion commander level. It’s so that [Palestinians] won’t be able to return”.

This is not about human shields—it’s about collective punishment and ethnic cleansing. It is not a “tragedy” when Israeli soldiers, by their own admission, are ordered to open fire on unarmed civilians waiting for food aid. According to Haaretz, these orders came from superiors, and one soldier described the area as a “killing field.” He stated,

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. No crowd-control measures, no tear gas. Just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.”

The Israeli military has been forced to launch inquiries into these incidents, though its denials are difficult to believe in light of such direct testimony.

Yet, only days after these revelations, Sam Harris wrote, “Whether or not Israel has done enough to mitigate the loss of innocent life in Gaza is debatable.” Debatable. To call this ‘debatable’ when there is clear evidence and confession of the killing of innocent people is not reasonable; it is apologetic, and it is excusing atrocity rather than confronting it.

This is only one example of Harris’s evasions. He also claims that “the war could end tomorrow if Hamas released the remaining hostages and ceased attacking Israel.” This is old propaganda. Even the Israeli government no longer claims that the release of hostages would end the war. Current ceasefire proposals  make clear that Israel’s objectives go far beyond the return of hostages. The stated aim is the total destruction of Hamas and the permanent transformation of Gaza’s political landscape. Israeli ministers have openly admitted that freeing hostages is no longer the “most important goal”; rather, the primary objective is the conquest and pacification of Gaza, regardless of the human cost.

Now that the signs of his obfuscations are clear, let’s move on to what is perhaps Harris’s biggest intellectual failing, which is his refusal to consider the history of the two nations, which he dismisses as irrelevant. This is particularly striking given that he invokes the Holocaust as a perpetual justification for Israel’s actions. How convenient that history of only one side matters. How convenient that the Nakba, the illegal occupation in the West Bank, and decades of siege and dispossession do not matter.  This is not a neutral or objective stance; it is a selective and biased approach that ignores the suffering and history of Palestinians. And by ignoring Israel’s history of human rights abuses, he can exonerate the state of Israel for any blame and implicates “militant islam” instead. This is sleight of hand and Sam knows it. It's a dishonest debate tactic which serves the ultimate purpose of blaming Gazans for their own suffering, and the reason it’s a so-called “tragedy” and not an atrocity. And he spells this out plainly: 

“Despite what we might wish to believe, there is simply no clear line of separation between a jihadist organization like Hamas and Palestinian society. We are talking about a culture that has been teaching its children to hate Jews, wage jihad, and aspire to martyrdom for decades (and they are still doing it).”

But why does he only insist on taking one side at their word? For one, it is no secret that Israel has been teaching its children for decades that it is the right of the chosen people to illegally settle the West Bank. These values were codified in the 2018 nation state law and are a part of the official Israeli school curriculum.  But Sam Harris refuses to acknowledge why a country that has been the victim of illegal occupation and oppression might harbor hatred to their oppressors. This history is “irrelevant” to him. How convenient that the history of oppression of the Palestinian people is irrelevant, but not the history of the Jews.

How convenient that he insists that we must “take jihadists at their word,” frequently quoting the most extreme statements from Hamas, yet explicitly ignoring violent rhetoric from Israeli leaders, such as:

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant:  “We are fighting human animals and are acting accordingly.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: “Gaza will be totally destroyed… The population… concentrated in a narrow strip… The rest of the Strip… will be empty.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu boasts of “destroying more and more homes,” and openly discusses the “inevitable outcome” being the emigration of Gazans.

And then there are the confessions from IDF soldiers themselves. If Harris were consistent, he would take these statements just as seriously. Instead, he selectively applies scrutiny and exonerates one side.

Perhaps the most damning evidence is how Sam has not engaged in any serious debate on this topic since October 7th. Although he has built his reputation on debating religious extremists and other controversial figures, he now avoids serious critics on the subject of Gaza. His podcast features only pro-Israel voices, and there is a noticeable absence of Palestinian perspectives, international legal experts, or anyone who might challenge his narrative. This is not intellectual bravery; it is avoidance and retreat into his own personal echo chamber. 

I want to add a personal note. Throughout my life I have also spoken out strongly against jihadism and religious extremism, and the various ways in which Islamic societies oppress their citizens in the name of Allah. However, there is no contradiction in holding both views. It is entirely possible—and necessary—to oppose both the occupation and the rise of violent extremism. Supporting Palestinian rights does not mean excusing the crimes of Hamas, just as condemning Hamas does not justify collective punishment or war crimes by Israel. Justice requires that we do not collectively punish the oppressed for the actions of their rulers.

Sam Harris’s essay is not just an intellectual failure; it is a moral failure. Calling Gaza a tragedy whitewashes what are, in fact, deliberate atrocities. Blaming the victims for the violence inflicted upon them is to become an apologist for that violence.

I refuse to be complicit, and I encourage you to do the same. Solidarity with the oppressed is not just a matter of sentiment, but of principle. And principle means telling the truth, even when it is inconvenient—especially then. That someone who was once regarded as a beacon of intellect and rational thinking could abandon those principles in defense of indefensible actions is, in the end, the real tragedy of Sam Harris.